What is "leucine zipper"

n. (context biochemistry English) A structural motif in proteins, especially those involved in transcription

A leucine zipper, aka leucine scissors, is a common three-dimensional structural motif in proteins. They were first described by Landschulz and collaborators in 1988 when they found that an enhancer binding protein had a very characteristic 30-amino acid segment and the display of these amino acid sequences on an idealized alpha helix revealed a periodic repetition of leucine residues at every seventh position over a distance covering eight helical turns. The polypeptide segments containing these periodic arrays of leucine residues were proposed to exist in an alpha-helical conformation and the leucine side chains from one alpha helix interdigitate with those from the alpha helix of a second polypeptide, facilitating dimerization.

Leucine zippers are a dimerization domain of the bZIP (Basic-region leucine zipper) class of eukaryotic transcription factors. The bZIP domain is 60 to 80 amino acids in length with a highly conserved DNA binding basic region and a more diversified leucine zipper dimerization region. The leucine zipper is a common three-dimensional structural motif in proteins and it has that name because leucines occur every seven amino acids in the dimerization domain. The localization of the leucines are critical for the DNA binding to the proteins. Leucine zippers are present in both eukaryotic and prokaryotic regulatory proteins, but are mainly a feature of eukaryotes. They can also be annotated simply as ZIPs, and ZIP-like motifs have been found in proteins other than transcription factors and are thought to be one of the general protein modules for protein–protein interactions.

The mechanism of transcriptional regulation by bZIP proteins has been studied in detail. Most bZIP proteins show high binding affinity for the ACGT motifs, which include CACGTG (G box), GACGTC (C box), TACGTA (A box), AACGTT (T box), and a GCN4 motif, namely TGA(G/C)TCA. A small number of bZIP factors such as OsOBF1 can also recognize palindromic sequences. However, the others, including LIP19, OsZIP-2a, and OsZIP-2b, do not bind to DNA sequences. Instead, these bZIP proteins form heterodimers with other bZIPs to regulate transcriptional activities.